AMERICA   PREFIGURED 


AN  ADDRESS  AT  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 
OCTOBER  21,  1892 


BY 


JUSTIN   WINSOR 


Fifty  copies  privately  reprinted  from  the  Harvard  Graduates'  Magazine 
January,  1893 


CAMBRIDGE 

at  tft 

1893 


?> 


./• 


AMERICA  PREFIGURED. 

ADDRESS  DELIVERED  IN    APPLETON   CHAPEL  ON  COLUMBUS   DAY,   FRIDAY,    OCTOBER 

21,  1892. 

UNDER  the  spell  of  a  great  commemoration,  a  common  devo 
tion  to  a  learned  life  has  brought  us  here  together.  We  may, 
therefore,  well  remember  that  the  most  successful  seaman  of  our 
day,  who  has  brought  learning  and  practical  tests  into  unison,  is 
he  who  passed  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  and  laid  open  the 
long-sought  passage  by  the  northeast;  who  received  his  incentive 
to  such  deeds  in  a  professor's  chair;  and  who  has  placed  his 
name  beside  those  of  Magellan  and  Da  Gama,  the  discoverers  of 
the  great  passages  by  the  south,  four  centuries  ago.  We  may, 
then,  pause  to  pay  this  tribute  to  Nordenskibld,  the  scholar  and 
the  discoverer,  before  we  enter  upon  the  consideration  of  some  of 
the  relations  of  scholarship  and  seamanship  in  the  world's  great 
est  discovery. 

It  was  but  recently  that  a  new  phase  of  the  wisdom  of  Aristotle 
was  evoked  from  oblivion.  It  behooves  us  to-day  to  recall  that 
another  phase  of  that  same  wisdom,  manifested  in  his  successors, 
after  eighteen  centuries,  summoned  a  new  world  from  a  similar 
oblivion.  It  was  this  peerless  teacher  of  the  ancient  time  who 

"Bred 
Great  Alexander  to  subdue  the  world !  " 

and  who  was  also  of  those  who  exhausted  worlds  and  then  im 
agined  new,  leaving  it  for  others  to  summon  these  latent  realms 
from  the  deep  for  men  to  occupy. 

Down  through  the  ages,  with  their  darkness  and  light,  this 
large  circumspection  passed  from  one  to  another,  as  men  unrolled 
the  papyrus  and  kept  alive  the  vision  upon  which  we  dwell  to 
day.  It  was  English  blood,  pulsating  in  the  brain  of  an  Oxford 
teacher  in  the  thirteenth  century,  which  gave  to  science  the  illus 
trious  name  of  Roger  Bacon.  It  was  he  who  brought  this  wis 
dom,  inherited  from  Aristotle,  to  the  forefront  in  an  ample  phi 
losophy,  and  transmitted  it  to  those  who  were  the  immediate 
inspirers  of  Columbus. 

The  early  years  of  the  fifteenth  century  were  a  time  when 
minds  of  adventurous  speculation  grew  firmer  in  the  belief  that 

312677 


4l  America  Prefigured. 

there  was  more  of  the  earth  than  what  was  known  to  be  inhab 
ited.  In  what  direction  should  men  turn  to  increase  their  know 
ledge  of  this  part  which  was  unknown?  Opinions  differed,  of 
course.  Some  said  to  the  north,  others  pointed  to  the  south,  but 
the  ice  of  the  one  and  the  burning  zone  of  the  other  daunted  the 
boldest.  It  needed  English  blood  once  more,  coursing  down 
through  John  of  Gaunt  to  his  grandson,  Prince  Henry  the  Navi 
gator,  who  organized  those  efforts,  directed  those  energies,  and 
inspired  that  confidence  which  carried  his  sailors  unscathed 
through  the  burning  belts  of  the  African  coast.  Year  after  year 
these  doughty  Portuguese  mariners  pushed  farther  and  farther, 
until  they  doubled  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  under  Vasco  da  Gama. 
The  way  to  Calicut  was  now  opened,  and  farther  on  they  came 
to  that  Cathay  which  had  grown  attractive  in  the  descriptions  of 
Marco  Polo. 

Two  results  came  with  scientific  precision  from  this  hardy  sea 
manship  of  the  Portuguese,  and  from  the  inspiring  trust  of  Prince 
Henry.  One  was  that  Da  Gama's  experience  of  the  ocean  winds 
and  currents  led  him  to  instruct  one  of  his  successors  on  this 
African  route  to  bear  away  towards  the  west  in  order  to  avoid 
their  opposition.  Thus  it  was  that  Cabral,  under  these  warn 
ings,  first  saw  that  Brazilian  coast  which  the  Bull  of  Demarcation 
had  already  confirmed  to  Portugal.  The  new  world  was  thus 
found  again  by  an  obedience  to  meteor ologic  laws.  A  second 
result  from  the  development  of  Prince  Henry's  aims  led  the 
Portuguese  on  from  Cathay  to  the  Moluccas,  and  thence  across 
the  Pacific  till  they  struck  the  coast  of  California,  there  is  some 
reason  to  suppose,  before  Balboa  had  crossed  the  isthmus  at 
Darien.  So  the  new  world  was  again  found  from  the  east,  as  it 
had  been  already  from  the  west,  as  a  natural  outcome  of  a  scien 
tific  perception.  This  is  what  we  owe  to  Prince  Henry  and  to  the 
Portuguese  in  the  revelation  of  the  new  world.  America  was  thus 
in  a  sense  rediscovered  from  the  side  of  Asia,  and  along  the  paths 
by  which  the  western  continents  had  been,  in  part  at  least,  origi 
nally  peopled. 

It  fell  also  to  Portugal  to  be  the  first  to  put  to  practical  tests 
that  complemental  theory,  which  was  another  part  of  that  large 
comprehension  of  the  cosmographical  problem,  which  had,  in  the 
main,  come  down  from  Aristotle,  till  it  had  captured  the  imagi- 


America  Prefigured.  5 

nation  of  Alfonso  of  Portugal  and  of  Toscanelli  in  Florence. 
This  other  and  complemental  theory  likewise  depended  upon  a 
belief  in  the  sphericity  of  the  earth,  —  a  belief  which  was  ancient 
in  the  time  when  Greek  science  was  at  its  best,  and  which  wise 
men  had  never  ceased  to  cherish  through  all  the  ages.  It  held  to 
an  extension  of  the  habitable  globe  east  and  west,  which  was  as 
necessary  as  one  to  the  north  and  south.  The  champion  of  this 
belief  in  the  middle  years  of  the  fifteenth  century,  seeking  to 
evolve  practical  tests  to  the  scholar's  dream,  was  Alfonso,  King  of 
Portugal.  Before  Prince  Henry  died,  in  1460,  this  monarch  had 
already  entered  upon  the  demonstration  of  this  theory,  which 
was  to  find  partial  vindication  in  1492,  and  a  completed  one 
under  Magellan  thirty  years  later. 

Sixty  years  and  more  earlier  than  the  fateful  voyage  of  Colum 
bus,  the  great  island  of  Antillia,  the  nominal  forerunner  of  the 
Antilles,  and  the  prototype  of  the  New  World,  had  appeared  for 
the  first  time  conspicuously  on  the  map  of  Bianco.  It  may  have 
been  but  the  result  of  vague  notions  to  set  an  ominous  land  in 
the  midst  of  that  darksome  sea.  It  may  have  been  the  result  of 
actual  contact,  helped  by  the  natural  instinct  which  gives  im 
aginary  details  to  oceanic  voids.  We  may  never  know  the  truth. 
Certain  it  is,  there  was  something  more  than  a  dream,  when  as 
early  as  1457,  and  thirty  years  before  the  little  fleet  of  crazy 
ships  crawled  out  of  the  harbor  of  Palos  on  that  August  morning, 
four  centuries  ago,  this  Portuguese  king  authorized  a  western 
voyage  of  discovery.  We  have  distinct  proofs,  which  repeated 
researches  in  the  Archives  at  Lisbon  have  revealed  of  late  years, 
that  before  the  intervention  of  Toscanelli  in  1474,  Alfonso  caused 
other  expeditions  for  western  search  to  be  dispatched.  They  all, 
through  stress  of  weather  or  faint-heartedness  in  the  seamen, 
failed  in  those  actual  results  which  are  associated  with  the  name 
of  Columbus.  They  were  the  forerunners,  presaging  what  was 
to  come  in  the  ripeness  of  time. 

Amid  the  surging  emotions  of  men  in  these  years  of  the  great 
est  geographical  development  which  the  world  has  ever  known, 
there  were  two  turning-points  in  men's  progress,  of  which  we 
must  not  forget  the  influence.  They  both  helped  to  lead  men 
to  the  finding  of  the  new  lands  and  to  the  removing  of  clouds 
about  them.  They  were  movements  that  were  independent  of 


6  America  Prefigured. 

individual   action.      They  were    combined    forces   in  inevitable 
progress. 

The  first  of  these  was  the  then  young  art  of  printing,  which, 
in  placing  the  old  philosophers  and  cosmographers  in  the  hands 
of  many,  created  that  public  opinion  which  is  always  necessary 
to  sustain  great  strides  of  onwardness,  —  public  opinion  concen 
trated  in  master  minds.  In  the  second  place,  we  must  credit 
what  I  will  not  call  the  rising  spirit  of  the  Reformation,  but 
rather  a  revulsion  among  the  faithful  of  the  Church  to  the  inor 
dinate  pretensions,  not  of  papal  authority,  but  of  the  temporary 
incumbents  of  the  Holy  Seat.  It  was  this  revulsion  which  put 
the  Spanish  acquiescence  in  the  Bull  of  Demarcation  in  expedi 
ency,  rather  than  in  faithful  obedience.  It  was  this  disregard  of 
papal  control  that  pushed  the  meridian  of  separation  farther  to 
the  west,  so  that  Portuguese  names  were  placed  on  the  headlands 
of  Newfoundland  and  Brazil.  England  had  for  a  century  or 
more  insisted  on  emancipating  herself  from  the  papal  supervision, 
as  to  the  occupation  of  new  lands ;  and  this  same  independence 
now  sent  John  Cabot  to  the  discovery  of  our  own  shores.  But 
in  the  midst  of  all  this  reaction,  the  Church  found  an  unabated 
constancy  in  Columbus,  which  forbade  his  conforming  to  the 
treaty  of  Tordesillas,  and  made  him  to  his  death  stand  faith 
ful  to  the  power  of  the  Pope,  as  manifested  in  the  Bull  of  De 
marcation. 

I  have  said  that  from  1474  we  trace  the  cardinal  influence  of 
Toscanelli,  the  famous  Florentine  astronomer,  —  the  same  upon 
whose  meridian  line  athwart  the  pavement  of  the  Duomo  at  Flor 
ence  the  traveler  gazes  to-day.  Let  us  glance  a  moment  into  the 
library  of  that  learned  man,  in  his  palace  upon  the  Arno,  and  see 
him  sitting  there,  with  the  white  hairs  of  nearly  fourscore  years 
flowing  from  beneath  a  velvet  skull-cap  and  spreading  upon  his 
bended  shoulders.  Mark  the  apparatus  which  encumbers  the 
apartment,  —  the  hanging  globe,  which  men  of  his  kind  had 
never  failed  to  understand ;  the  astrolabe,  upon  which  Regiomon- 
tanus  had  expended  his  ingenuity;  the  lunar  tables,  which  the 
eager  mariners,  inspired  by  confidence  in  the  compass  derived 
from  the  Levant,  had  long  carried  to  sea,  beyond  the  Pillars  of 
Hercules.  Look  at  those  heavy  tomes  on  his  table,  as  he  bows 


America  Prefigured.  7 

above  them,  and  we  find  them  to  be  the  "De  Situ  Orbis"  of 
Strabo,  who  had  revived  the  views  of  Aristotle  in  the  first  cen 
tury,  and  whose  "Geography"  had  now  only  recently  come  from 
the  press;  the  astronomical  poem  of  Manilius,  damp  from  the 
types;  and  the  " Polyhistor  "  of  Solinus.  The  " Cosmographia " 
of  Ptolemy  was  the  single  work  of  all  the  great  geographers  dis 
played  in  manuscript,  for  it  was  not  till  the  following  year  that 
Sixtus  the  Fifth  ordered  that  it  should  be  put  to  press.  These, 
with  Aristotle  and  Seneca,  were  the  companions  of  that  old  man's 
studious  hours.  Out  of  them  all,  by  comparison  and  deduction, 
he  had  raised  a  vision  of  the  shores  of  Cathay,  lying  over  against 
the  coast  of  Spain. 

It  was  to  this  man,  thus  surrounded  in  that  Florentine  palace, 
that  there  came  one  day  in  1474  a  missive  in  the  interests  of 
King  Alfonso,  then,  as  we  have  seen,  struggling  with  the  great 
problem,  and  asking  its  explanation  of  this  Italian  sage.  Our 
American  students  have  only  very  recently  been  made  aware, 
how,  at  a  later  day,  the  Emperor  Maximilian  urged  precisely  the 
same  views  upon  Alfonso's  successor,.  King  John;  and  how  they 
were  enforced  by  a  learned  Dr.  Miinzmeister,  of  the  imperial 
city  of  Nuremberg,  in  an  epistle  to  the  same  King  John,  written 
in  apparent  ignorance  of  Columbus  and  his  urgency.  This  is  the 
more  strange,  as  Martin  Behaim,  who  had  just  then  made  his 
famous  globe  in  that  city,  was  seemingly  a  friend  of  this  cosmo- 
grapher,  and  a  fellow-advocate  of  a  western  voyage.  This  letter 
of  Miinzmeister  goes  a  great  way  to  show  that  the  needy  Genoese 
adventurer,  who  had  been  hanging  about  the  shipping  on  the 
Tagus,  had  had  no  intercourse  with  the  most  famous  cosmo- 
grapher  then  living  in  the  Portuguese  capital. 

So  the  belief  in  a  western  passage  was  in  the  air,  and  wherever 
learning  had  given  to  men  a  habit  of  expansion  and  insight,  the 
outcome  was  foreseen.  The  cosmographical  theory  needed  a 
man  who  could  dare  to  make  it  a  fact. 

To  the  letter  of  the  Portuguese  sovereign,  Toscanelli  replied 
by  sending  to  him  that  map  which  corresponded  probably  very 
nearly  to  what  has  come  down  to  us  in  the  Behaim  globe. 
Though  Las  Casas  had  it,  the  map  has  disappeared,  and  he  tells 
us  that  it  exemplified  the  oceanic  theory  that  placed  Asia  over 
against  Spain.  The  map  was  accompanied  by  a  letter  enforcing 


8  America  Prefigured. 

these  views,  which  had  sprung  from  collating  the  opinions  of 
learned  men  from  the  days  of  Aristotle.  This  letter  has  not 
come  down  to  us  in  the  hand  of  its  writer;  but  the  original  Latin, 
copied  by  Columbus  himself  on  the  flyleaf  of  a  book  in  the  rem 
nant  of  the  library  of  his  son,  Ferdinand  Columbus,  is  preserved 
in  Seville.  The  receipt  of  this  letter  from  Toscanelli  was  simply 
a  confirmation  of  the  views  which  Alfonso  had  been  acting  upon 
in  authorizing  explorations  towards  the  west.  How  long  after 
1474  it  was,  when  a  similar  communication  reached  Columbus,  is 
in  dispute.  The  future  admiral  had  only  recently  come  to  Lis 
bon,  and  it  is  a  question  if  he  had  earlier  come  in  contact  with 
the  theories  which  were  now  having  a  new  interest  for  the  learned. 
Mr.  Clements  R.  Markham,  perhaps  the  best  informed  of  English 
men  in  this  field,  has  within  a  month  or  two  expressed  his  belief 
that  Columbus  had  pondered  on  these  views  before  leaving  Savona 
in  1473,  but  it  is  an  opinion  which  he  does  not  claim  to  substan 
tiate  by  proofs.  He  reaches  his  conclusion  by  supposing  that  it 
was  but  a  short  time  after  Alfonso  had  received  his  communica 
tion  from  Toscanelli,  and  in  the  same  year,  1474,  that  Columbus, 
acting  upon  the  reports  of  Toscanelli 's  views,  himself  wrote  to 
the  Florentine  patriarch  and  asked  anew  for  his  opinions,  —  a 
proof  that  the  letter  to  Alfonso  had  not  actually  come,  in  its  com 
pleteness,  to  the  attention  of  Columbus,  but  that  he  had  heard 
enough  of  it  to  desire  to  learn  more  from  him  who  wrote  it. 

The  exact  time  when  Columbus  got  his  response  from  Florence 
depends  on  the  interpretation  to  be  given  to  a  phrase  which  Tos 
canelli  added  to  this  new  missive.  When  the  old  philosopher 
received,  from  this  unknown  correspondent  in  Lisbon,  a  request 
for  a  repetition  of  his  views,  he  replied  by  sending  a  copy  of  his 
letter  to  Alfonso's  secretary,  adding  to  it  that  it  had  been  origi 
nally  written  "before  the  wars  in  Castile."  The  date  of  his  com 
munication  with  the  Genoese  depends  upon  the  meaning  of  these 
words,  since  the  indorsement  on  the  copy  had  no  date.  The  most 
eminent  living  authority  on  questions  of  this  kind,  Henry  Har- 
risse,  an  American  long  resident  in  Paris,  understands  it  to  mean, 
contrary  to  the  view  of  Mr.  Markham,  that  this  communication 
to  Columbus  followed,  as  that  to  Alfonso  had  preceded,  the  wars 
which  were  ended  in  1479.  It  was  by  this  treaty  between  Spain 
and  Portugal  that  Spain  was  awarded  the  Canaries  and  the  right 


America  Prefigured.  9 

to  explore  to  the  west,  and  Portugal  was  given  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  sailing  down  the  coast  of  Africa. 

I  must  confess  that  the  weight  of  probability  is  altogether  in 
favor  of  the  opinion  expressed  by  Harrisse,  which  would  place 
the  forming  of  the  ambitious  hopes  of  Columbus,  under  the  incen 
tive  of  Toscanelli,  not  far  from  the  year  1479.  Thus  it  was  thir 
teen  years  before  the  final  fruition  in  1492,  that  the  theory  of  a 
westward  extension  found  in  this  Italian  wanderer  a  courageous 
adherent  destined  to  work  out  its  solution. 

It  must  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  papal  authority  had  in  sev 
eral  bulls,  previous  to  this  date,  confirmed  to  Portugal  the  rights 
of  exploration  out  upon  the  Sea  of  Darkness.  It  was  not  only 
the  overweening  demands  of  Columbus  for  territorial  sway,  but 
the  content  of  the  Portuguese  king  with  what  he  was  doing  and 
hoped  to  do  under  these  papal  permissions,  that  induced  the  final 
rejection  by  that  power  of  Columbus's  importunities.  So  the 
expatriated  Genoese,  forced  to  extremities,  and  with  unswerving 
allegiance  to  the  idea  which  now  possessed  him,  deserted  friends, 
creditors,  and  wife.  He  clandestinely  crossed  the  frontier,  and 
set  about  his  suit  for  recognition  in  Spain. 

It  is  a  familiar  story,  full  of  doubts  and  complications,  which 
it  is  not  my  purpose  now  to  dwell  upon.  Queen  Isabella  was 
won;  King  Ferdinand  simply  acquiesced,  much  to  his  later 
regret;  and  the  portentous  voyage  was  made!  Columbus  was 
borne  along  by  the  supposition  that  the  distance  to  be  traversed 
was  much  shorter  than  it  really  was,  and  this  misconception  luck 
ily  supplied  a  large  part  of  the  attendant  courage. 

By  a  stroke  of  fortune  which  seems  to  recognize  the  preemp 
tion  of  Portugal,  with  a  single  ship  left  to  his  direction,  out  of 
his  three,  bearing  his  great  message,  Columbus  sought  refuge 
from  a  storm  in  the  port  of  Lisbon,  carrying  back  to  Portugal 
the  answer  to  the  vast  problem,  which  Alfonso  and  Toscanelli 
had  set  down  on  the  page  of  history.  It  has  only  very  recently 
been  made  clear  that  Portugal  grasped  the  realized  conception 
with  great  alacrity,  and  even  before  Columbus  was  received  by 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella  at  Barcelona,  a  messenger  of  the  Portu 
guese  king  had  reached  Rome  with  tidings  of  the  discovery. 
Here  he  was  when  the  Spanish  messengers  arrived,  waiting  about 
the  Holy  Seat,  intent  to  protect  the  interests  of  Portugal  under 


10  America  Prefigured. 

earlier  guaranties  of  the  Papacy.     Hence  the  promptness  of  Pope 
Alexander's  response  in  the  Bull  of  Demarcation  in  May,  1493. 

Fortunately  the  exhilarated  mind  of  Columbus  was  just  what 
was  needed  to  show  that  what  the  world  is  accustomed  to  call 
f  oolhardiness  could  be  sublimated  by  success ;  but  it  was  a  success 
that  was  dependent  not  only  on  faith,  but  upon  striking  good  for 
tune.  If  Columbus,  in  his  cock-boats,  had  really  reached  the 
dominions  of  the  Asiatic  potentates,  it  is  a  question  if  he  had 
lived  to  repeat  his  tale.  If  a  flight  of  parrots  had  not  induced 
him  to  change  his  course,  he  might  have  struck  the  Florida  shores. 
Here  he  would  have  encountered  the  ferocious  natives  of  that 
coast,  which  later  Spaniards  knew  too  well.  If  the  fate  of  Colum 
bus  had  been  like  theirs,  it  is  not  improbable  that  Cabral  would 
have  occupied  in  history  the  proud  designation  of  the  Discoverer 
of  America,  and  eight  years  hence  we  should  have  been  engaged 
with  Portugal  in  the  grand  ceremonials  in  which  Spain  this  year 
fortuitously  shares.  As  it  happened,  Columbus,  in  making  his 
landfall  among  the  Bahamas,  and  in  coursing  the  island  shores  of 
so  inoffensive  a  race  as  the  Lucayans,  was  subjected  to  no  such 
dangers,  and  triumphantly  returned  to  repeat  the  most  imposing 
story  in  profane  history. 

I  began  with  crediting  to  the  ancient  Greeks  the  origin  of  that 
cosmographical  study  whose  fruition  was  ultimately  found  in  a 
new  world.  Let  us  turn  now  to  that  other  ancient  people.  If 
the  world-maps  of  Strabo  and  Ptolemy  had  not  given  the  space 
almost  entirely  to  land,  the  Komans  might  not  have  been  so 
wholly  engrossed  by  their  land  conquests.  If  the  dominion  which 
they  held  in  the  world  had  passed  to  their  rivals,  the  Carthagin 
ians,  with  their  maritime  ambition,  the  revelations  of  the  Atlan 
tic  might  not  have  been  delayed  so  long.  If  the  Romans  failed 
in  this  supremacy  by  sea,  their  descendants  acquired  it. 

Two  centuries  before  Columbus,  Dante  had  looked  upon  the 
setting  sun  as  journeying  to  an  unknown  world.  We  have  seen 
how  Italy,  in  the  fulness  of  time,  gave  Toscanelli  to  the  incep 
tion  of  this  ancient  and  ardent  hope.  It  was  to  Italy,  too,  that 
we  owe  the  wayward  zealot,  who,  kneeling  upon  the  strand  of  San 
Salvador,  chanted  the  Salve  Regina  beneath  the  banner  of  Cas 
tile.  It  was  to  a  Florentine  merchant  that  we  owe  those  graphic 


America  Prefigured.  11 

descriptions  of  the  Brazilian  coasts,  with  the  lifting  of  the  South 
ern  Cross  to  wondering  eyes,  making  a  theme  so  fascinating  that 
relentless  Fate  has  made  us  to-day  Americans  and  not  Colum 
bians.  It  was  to  Verrazzano,  another  Italian,  that  France  owed  a 
claim  to  our  Atlantic  seaboard,  that  it  was  not  in  French  nature 
to  make  good  in  the  face  of  that  other  claim,  which  still  another 
Italian,  John  Cabot,  established  for  the  greatest  of  all  colonizing 
peoples.  We  are  here  to-day  by  virtue  of  the  might  which  is  in 
English  blood,  generously  mixed  with,  and  not  weakened  by,  a 
suffusion  from  the  veins  of  every  people  beneath  the  sun. 

Spain,  France,  and  England  were  thus  the  great  claimants  of 
this  western  land.  It  was  the  lot  of  Spain  that  she  sought  gold 
in  the  tropics,  and  she  fell  behind  in  the  race  for  power,  which 
depends  on  character  and  not  on  gold.  It  was  the  lot  of  France 
that  she  sought  "to  plant  a  decaying  feudalism  amid  the  sterility 
of  the  north,  and  she  lost  in  the  conflict  with  nature  and  her 
rivals.  It  was  the  lot  of  England  to  place  her  Cavaliers  on  the 
Chesapeake  and  her  Roundheads  on  Massachusetts  Bay.  The 
spirits  of  these  indomitable  English,  reinforced  by  what  could 
affiliate  in  other  stocks,  found  the  gaps  of  the  Alleghanies, 
poured  along  the  watercourses  of  the  interior,  scaled  the  passes  of 
the  Eockies ;  and  as  a  new  product  of  amalgamated  races,  bound 
as  one  under  the  principles  of  the  English  common  law,  they 
have  determined  the  character  of  our  Pacific  coast,  from  Alaska 
to  Santa  Barbara. 

And  all  this  has  been  done  under  the  pioneering  of  Italy,  heir 
of  her  elder  sister,  by  the  2Egean.  Let  us  not  to-day,  in  this 
academic  atmosphere,  forget  what  the  world  owes  to  the  learning 
and  to  the  prescience  of  Aristotle,  Roger  Bacon,  and  Toscanelli, 
illumined  by  the  dauntlessness  and  unexampled  seamanship  of 
Columbus. 

Justin  Winsor,  '53. 


«122£L*™* OF  25  CENTS 


WILL  INCREASE  TO  s 
OAY  AND  TO  $i  ol 
OVERDUE. 


REC'D  LD 

— ' 

— APR44-W- 


PAT.  JAN.  21,  1908 


